


It Was His Last Thought Before He Fell

by makbaes (gentlemindedlostgirl)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Angst, Character Death, Death is not descriptive but...implied so there's the warning, Gods, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kun is Apollo, Kuntober, M/M, This is just...sad, Yukhei is Icarus, icarus - Freeform, peep the notes!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 00:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16294934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlemindedlostgirl/pseuds/makbaes
Summary: Kun, God of music, poetry, and the sun, has been watching Xuxi grow up in the tower he and his father have been isolated to. He never expects them to attempt an escape. And he never expects them to be successful.What happens next is a sad story of hubris and love.(It's an Icarus AU)





	It Was His Last Thought Before He Fell

**Author's Note:**

> Me: I hate angst   
> Also me: Writes...this. 
> 
> The title is the same as a poem by R. Meisel that inspired this piece. 
> 
> The character death is implied but...we all know how the story of Icarus ends, don't we?

_ “How to love a god: You know what will happen and you do it anyway. You burn because this is what it means to love. This is what it means to fly. Recall the tale of Icarus. Choose to be Icarus.” _

 

_ “How to love a mortal: Stay away from him. Gods do not love. You are a God. Do not love something that will someday die.” _

 

_ \-- Natalie Wee _

 

* * *

 

Kun had become busy. Far too busy these days. He had enough on his plate when he had been dealing simply with music and poetry. And then his brother had gone and decided the Old Gods had to go--and they had more jobs to pick up. 

They had given Kun the sun. 

Sunrise was a lot of work. It wasn’t as if his bones could ache--but he imagined that if they could, then they would be after every morning. Which was why he always liked to spend a few leisurely hours after sunrise sitting on a cloud with his lyre, strumming away at melodies while he watched the world wake up. 

It was a beautiful thing. It always had been. He envied the mortals more than he would ever admit to the others. His family would call him naive among other, harsher things. But Kun figured they didn’t know what they were talking about. His eldest brother had told him not to be jealous of the mortals because they were doomed. They had been born to die. 

Kun wanted to tell him just how wrong he was. Mortals weren’t doomed. They didn’t have to worry about an eternity of drama, and fate, and star-crossedness the way Gods do. They didn’t have to carry the weight of an entire universe on their backs. They could just wake up, and break their fast, and do their work, and be in love. And that was all. 

Kun figured that was beautiful. Mortals weren’t completely carefree--they had their worries, and anxieties, and hardships. But they got to worry and fight about such silly things--whether or not a person had fed the chickens that morning, if there was enough wine for a get together happening the next evening, things that wouldn’t matter in the slightest in a week meant the entire world to mortals in a moment. They didn’t have an eternity to think about--as far as they were concerned, they only had a day. Maybe a week, if they were really planning ahead. 

Gods didn’t have that luxury. Kun had to worry about everything and everyone at all times. And he  _ vastly  _ preferred honing his attention in on the much more trivial matters of humanity than whatever his brothers were arguing over in a given moment. He couldn’t care less who would have dominion over the sky, or the sea, or agriculture. He didn’t want to know what town had built a new shrine for any of them or what it looked like or if it was better or worse than one built for a different sibling ten years ago. 

He wanted to know if the mortal he had been watching for the last three years was going to ask his lover to marry him. He was the God of poetry after all, and he had always been a sucker for a good romantic verse. And this young man in particular had been asking for his blessing on his love poetry since he had met his lover. This Taeil had a way with words--Kun had been impressed. Johnny was going to be lucky when Taeil finally got the courage to ask him. Kun had given abundant blessings, of course. But ended up sighing every day when it seemed that he was going to put the action off just a little longer. 

Instead, Kun turned his attention to the tower across the way. He didn’t know how the two people inhabiting it--a man and his son--had gotten there. He didn’t particularly care either. One morning no one lived there--the next there were two. What  _ did  _ pique his interest, however, was watching the father attempt to craft what appeared to be two sets of wings out of feathers and wax. They had been there for years, collecting the feathers required for the wings had been a slow and patient task. The son that was now a young man had once been a small child. Kun had watched him grow up. And he would never admit it out loud, but he had grown up  _ beautifully.  _ Lithe but toned, bright features, long, but delicate fingers--not that Kun had been paying much attention. 

It didn’t take a genius to sort out what the father was attempting with the wings, and it admittedly amused Kun a great deal.  _ Foolish mortals. It’ll never work. And I’ll be so sorry to watch you fall because the idea is quite clever. I would catch you if I could, but I’m already in enough trouble with my brothers for messing with humans and I don’t feel like dealing with them.  _

They were finished with the project now, it seemed. The father was fixing the wings to his son’s arms before attaching his own. Kun couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it seemed that the father was giving his son a lecture of sorts. Rules. Advice. Warnings. Whatever might help him when they finally attempted their voyage. When he was done preparing his son, he put his own wings on. They then walked to the window ledge together. The father jumped off first. And then the son. 

Kun expected a lot of things. He expected screams, he expected to watch two clever humans fall to their deaths into the unforgiving sea, the dominion of his brother Yuta, to be collected by Ten, who took care of the dead. It was the natural order of things, and Kun would have been sad to watch it happen, but only for a moment before he returned to the romantic exploits of Taeil and Johnny. 

The one thing he had never anticipated was that they would actually be able to  _ fly.  _

It made Kun sit back on his cloud. He was, admittedly, a little worried. Humans weren’t supposed to fly. Their being ground-bound was one of the few things left that separated them from the Gods. If they could, perchance, fly their way up to the Gods--what was to stop them from trying to take over the heavens? That was something he was going to have to inform his brothers about. As incredible as this invention was--and as much Kun wanted to commend the father for thinking it up and crafting it to perfection--humans could not be allowed to fly. 

And yet. He couldn’t stop sitting on his cloud and watching them ascend. Higher, and higher into the air. It was impressive. It was not every day that a God found himself in awe of something or someone, but today was the exception. He paid special attention to the son, as he kept going. Even from far away, Kun couldn’t ignore the grin that was on his face, a glow rivaling that of the sun that he took such care after. Eyes wide as the moon that his brother Sicheng handled. He could see the stern look on his father’s face as he tried to shout something at his son. But he didn’t listen to whatever he was saying. He kept flying. Higher, and higher, and...

Directly towards him. 

He realized it three seconds too late, and soon the young man was crashing into the cloud he had been hiding behind, tumbling into the fluff with a larger-than-life laugh like this had simply been a fun detour and not something potentially dangerous. 

It took the young man a few moments to realize he wasn’t alone there on the cloud, opting instead to play with the fluff with a childlike wonder, laughing to himself and musing about all the people he would have to tell about this when he had the chance. When he finally allowed himself a moment to breathe and look over at Kun, he froze. But it was only for a fraction of a moment before he was grinning again. 

“You--how?” he asked, his tone deep, dulcet in a way that didn’t quite seem to match his exuberant motions. He was loud, but not exactly as brash as Kun had expected. He demanded the attention of those around him, he was not going to be one to be ignored. But there was a warmth in his tone. He was not loud to be boastful, he was loud simply because he was excited and wanted to be heard. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Kun said, shaking his head. “We shouldn’t be talking.”

It wasn’t that it wasn’t allowed, per se. It was frowned upon. But Gods were just as flawed as the humans they claimed rulership over, and he could point his fingers at every single one of his brothers for humans they had become...involved with, one way or another. But he had always been different, always kept his distance as he watched his brothers fall deeper in love with people that they could never stay with.

It never ended well. Which was why Kun had always opted to admire humans from afar. Humans were fickle. Gods, even more so. Gods’ emotions shifted like the winds and Kun had become very patient in not following his passions too far. 

“You’re Kun,” the other observed, crawling closer to him, making Kun move backward in response.

“No, I’m not,” the God lied, shaking his head. 

“Yes you are!” the mortal laughed, beaming at him. He beamed at Kun and reminded the God that he was something divine, something to be in awe of. It wasn’t a feeling Kun had often these days. But being in this human’s presence made him hyper-aware of it.

“There was a temple for you back home, the statue looks just like you! Down to the freckle,” he said, and he reached out his hand to poke gently at the freckle by Kun’s eyebrow. 

Kun didn’t back away this time, let the mortal touch him and the God of the sun thought his own skin might start to burn. 

“You’re even more beautiful in person,” the mortal said, softer this time, like he was coming upon a revelation that was going to shake the foundations of the universe.

“Don’t do this,” Kun replied, his voice hardly audible. The poet God had never found himself speechless, but this was as close as he had ever gotten. Kun had spent so long being so careful. He loved mortals, but he couldn’t... _ love  _ mortals. He shouldn’t. 

But he did. He didn’t know this mortals name, but he had watched him grow up. Watched every day how he grew into an excited boy, optimistic despite his circumstances. And kind, always looking after his father and making sure he didn’t work too hard and got enough rest. They had been here this long, they would survive another day. And...beautiful. Gods, he was so beautiful. He had never seen him this close before, and it felt like he was suffocating. But he liked it. 

“Do what?” the mortal asked naively. 

“You can’t,” Kun said. “Go back to your father. He’ll be looking for you.”

“Come with me,” the mortal pleaded. 

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Yukhei. Xuxi. Call me either, I don’t care, just come with me.”

“Xuxi,” Kun said, tasting the name on his tongue and finding it sweeter, more nourishing than ambrosia. For a moment, Kun indulged the idea of what that might be like. What if he did what all of his brothers had done one time or another? Ran off with a mortal and shirked his Godly responsibilities. It might be nice, for a little while. To spend his days in humanity, waking up next to Xuxi, tangled under bedsheets with him as they both ignored what work needed to be done. He thought about writing poetry for the mortal and leaving it for him before he went to go make the sun rise, and coming back to watch him make breakfast. 

Maybe they’d argue. Maybe they’d have petty mortal fights about whether or not the chickens had been fed that morning or if there was enough wine for the get-together the following evening. Maybe Kun might meet his friends, talk about things that wouldn’t matter in a week but felt like the entire world at that moment. Maybe Kun could take things one day at a time instead of worrying about an eternity.

The idea felt like a breath of fresh air. And he couldn’t have it. 

“You don’t know me,” Kun said, regaining his senses. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do.” And he didn’t. Kun wasn’t naive--this Xuxi wasn’t the first human to see the divine beauty of a God and decide they would risk the universe to be with them. That feeling never lasted long when mortals came to learn that Gods were just like humans after all--only older and far more terrible. 

“I’ll learn,” Xuxi said, coming closer to Kun. “You can teach me.”

“I’m not a good teacher,” Kun lied as Xuxi came right in front of his face. He could feel the mortal’s body heat radiating onto him and it was too hot, far too hot, and distracting, and Kun had gotten very good at not acting on impulse but Xuxi’s lips were  _ right there  _ and if he just leaned forward a little bit, he might be able to just--

“Good, I’m a terrible student,” Xuxi said, a smirk on his face. 

Cocky. Kun wasn’t great with cocky. Cocky got  _ Gods  _ in trouble, let alone mortals who thought they were invincible, who wouldn’t know “too far” if it smacked them in the stupid face. And for a flash of a moment, Kun remembered his power. Remembered that humans were not supposed to fly. Remembered that if he really wanted to, he could remind this mortal where his place was in the grand scheme of things. 

That was the important thing about Kun. He was music, lyrics, poetry--he was words of love and affection, melodies of longing and joy. He was sun, he was warmth and comfort. But the sun was also power. Sun was dangerous if you strayed too close for too long. Gentle did not mean pushover. Gentle did not mean ready to be taken advantage of.

“You’re being greedy,” Kun said, his face hardening a bit as he sat up straight, regaining his commanding aura. It was not good for mortals to forget that they did not enter the divine realm for good reason. 

Yukhei seemed to shrink slightly as Kun straightened himself, remembered for a moment that he was human, that he was already risking everything just by being here and that he should not be pushing his luck. This only added to the swelling power in Kun’s chest.

“I could kill you for it. I  _ should  _ kill you for it,” the God said, his tone feigning a disinterest.

“You won’t,” Xuxi smiled, and he was right, and Kun hated that he was right. He wouldn’t kill Xuxi. Not on purpose. But he could make him suffer, remind him who had power here, remind him that humans were not meant to be like Gods and they needed to stop trying to. 

He wrapped his fingers around the side of Xuxi’s neck, pulled him close, relished in the way the mortal’s breath hitched in surprise. He could feel the way his heart beat faster with the anticipation. It wasn’t often that Kun got drunk on is own power, but when he did, he never knew how to stop. It was a folly, perhaps, but it was one of the few that he allowed himself.

“You’re an idiot,” Kun laughed against his lips. 

“I’m anything you want me to be,” Xuxi promised. But he would have promised Kun anything if it meant he would kiss him. And it tugged at the God’s heartstrings for a moment. Because as cruel as he was planning on being, he  _ was  _ fond of the mortal. He wouldn’t kill him. But he would make it hurt. And he would hurt himself in the process. 

But that was okay. Gods were supposed to hurt. 

Humans? Humans weren’t supposed to hurt. They did that to themselves when they got too reckless, too ambitious, too excited. Xuxi was all of those things rolled into one silly, foolish mortal. 

Kun had said he was a bad teacher. But Xuxi had lessons to learn. 

“What would happen if I went with you?” Kun asked, lips ghosting over Xuxi’s skin, moving across his cheek to the other side of his neck. Xuxi tilted his head, bared himself in submission, allowed Kun to do with him whatever he pleased. Maybe he wasn’t such a terrible student after all. 

“Anything,” Xuxi said, hands starting to shake. “I don’t care. I’ll do anything. Be anything.”

_ Foolish, foolish mortal.  _ “And if I asked you to leave? If I asked you to fly away and never come back, never try to find me again, never pray to me again, never offer me anything?”

“I’d die,” Xuxi said, resolutely, and if Kun didn’t know any better, he’d say he sounded earnest. 

“You’d forget me,” Kun lamented, letting his free hand roam over Xuxi’s thigh. “They all do. You mortals. You’ll live. You’ll fall in love. Live your too-short life and hardly remember the day you touched a God.”

“The others are idiots,” Xuxi said, eyes wide as Kun pressed gentle kisses down his neck, featherlight touches, but each one made Xuxi feel more and more like he could conquer the entire world. And he would try, if Kun asked him to. In that moment he was nothing but a vessel to be pushed around and commanded and he was more than content with that. 

“You’re no different than them,” Kun whispered against his skin. “No better. No worse, either, from what I’ve seen. But certainly no better.”

“From what you’ve seen?” Xuxi asked. “Have you been watching me?”

_ Shit.  _ He wanted to curse himself for such a mistake. You could not let mortals know that they were special to you. They would never let it go after that--they would feel too powerful. But Xuxi had caught him, had moved backward so that he could look Kun in the eye as they spoke. It wasn’t cocky like he had been before--this was not boastful. This was awe. 

“Since you arrived at the tower,” Kun admitted. “I watched you grow up, Xuxi.” And just like that, easily and terribly, all of the power Kun had been drunk off of vanished into the ether. Instead replaced by softness as he watched a light pink blush rise to Xuxi’s cheeks. The boy who had been so boastful before was now shying into himself. And Kun was so incredibly endeared, he couldn’t help but reach out to him, cradling his face in his palm. 

“It’s why I can’t--why I  _ won’t  _ go with you,” Kun said. 

“Why?” Xuxi asked, his face falling. 

“Because I’m already too fond of you,” he admitted quietly. 

“ _ Me?”  _ Xuxi asked. “Me...a God... _ you?  _ Fond of me...” he smiled up at him, a wide grin that made Kun feel like he should risk the entirety of the future to spend just a little bit more time with him. “So you have to. You  _ have  _ to come with me. Please,” Xuxi said, taking his hands in his. “I said I’d do anything...be anything for you. I mean that. I’ll spend the rest of my life on my knees praying to you if you want that.”

“You’re making promises you can’t keep,” Kun lamented. “You can’t stay, and I can’t go.”

“Why not?” Xuxi asked earnestly, stubbornly, resolutely. “You’re a God. You have forever. We don’t. My lifetime is ten minutes for you. You could spare it.”

He wasn’t wrong, technically. That was the other troubling thing about humans. Even if Kun would allow himself to drown in the feelings that were blooming in his chest, it would never be long enough. They would have such little time. And Kun felt everything so completely, so all-encompassing, that it would destroy him when it came time for this to end. So it was better to end it now before it really had a chance to stop. 

“You don’t know anything about being a God,” Kun countered. “It’s so much more complicated than that.”

“Stop saying what you’re supposed to,” Xuxi countered. “Say what you feel. Tell me what you  _ want. _ ”

Kun wants to say  _ I want to go home with you, to wherever that is. And I want to find a little house with you in the middle of a busy town where you could find work and I could find leisure. I want to write you into my verses while I wait for you to come home. I want you to try and write me verses back. I hope they’re terrible. I’d find them beautiful anyway. I have been working so hard and I want to take a break for the rest of your life so I can spend it tending to you instead. I want to sleep tangled in your limbs and I want to hear you whine that it gets too hot. I want to get you drunk and hear you laugh. I want to kiss every inch of your skin and listen to you sigh. I want you to keep making promises you could never hope to keep. You told me to teach you, but I want to learn how to be human. _

“I want you to go. And don’t come find me again,” Kun lied instead, breaking his own heart in the process.

Xuxi’s face fell, but he nodded. He had promised that he would do anything Kun asked of him. He had meant every word. “Then I’ll go,” he said, his voice cracking slightly, making a move to leave before halting. “Can I be greedy one more time?”

“I should push you off this cloud for asking,” he scowled. He wished Xuxi would just leave. This was painful for them both and it would just be easier if they could put an end to it now instead of prolonging the inevitable.

“Can I anyway? I’ll never see you again, I’ll do what you asked. I’m only asking for one thing in return.”

“And it is?”

“A parting gift,” Xuxi whispered, hopeful. “So that my bones will still be warm while I’m missing you.”

Sometimes Kun hated being a God. 

“You were right,” Kun hummed. “That is greedy.”

“Please,” Xuxi begged. 

Kun cocked his head in consideration but ultimately agreed. He was breaking his own heart in the breaking of Xuxi’s, it was something that could not be helped. The gift was more of a self-indulgence than a present to the other. He cupped Xuxi’s face in his once more and brought their lips together for one gentle kiss. Kun’s soft lips pressed against Xuxi’s chapped ones. Kun could have sat there for eternity, learning the landscape of the other’s body and making himself at home in his. Kun couldn’t help his sigh as Xuxi’s calloused hands explored the expanses of Kun’s shoulders, bodies feeling on fire. This, Kun lamented, was too much. It was a mistake. It would make him ache for the first time. And still he could not stop himself. 

Xuxi’s father had told him a hundred thousand stories in his childhood. It could not be avoided when there was not much else to do in a tower besides build the wings you might someday use to escape. And in that time, his father told him many stories that had many morals, plenty of pieces of advice that he held to his chest to bear in mind for later. 

But one thing Xuxi’s father never told him was that one good first kiss feels a lot like wax melting off of your wings. And that it would feel like bliss. And that he wouldn’t even notice. And moreover, that once he finally did notice, that he wouldn’t care in the slightest. 

Because kissing Kun was like being told he had been granted the world. 

And Kun, for his part, was having his first real taste of humanity. He was fundamentally understanding what it felt like to be  _ human;  _ to worry about something that wouldn’t matter in a week but felt like a lifetime’s worth of pain in a moment.

When the kiss broke, the world ended.

“You have to go now,” Kun said, sounding much braver and assured than he felt. He was practically as old as time. He couldn’t afford to let one pathetic mortal see his hands shake as his entire being told him to make sure the other never left his side.

“As you wish,” Xuxi lamented, standing for the first time since he arrived and stepping to the edge of the cloud. He looked down to the water. He rolled his shoulders back. He looked to Kun and offered him a sad smile. “Goodbye,” he said softly. “Come find me someday.”

Kun watched as Xuxi stepped off the cloud. But closed his eyes and covered his ears so that he might be able to ignore the sound of him hitting the water. 

  
  
  



End file.
